


Introduction to Western Philosophy

by berlynn_wohl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Justice, Lectures, Philosophy, mention of past rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/pseuds/berlynn_wohl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Professor Oleg Johannsen got some sideways looks from his students, as he did not sound like an Oleg Johannsen. He sounded like a poncy Englishman. Nevertheless, the bemused stares of several students melted into admiration as he continued to speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Introduction to Western Philosophy

**Author's Note:**

> This fic owes everything to "The Story of Stupidity," by James F. Welles, Ph. D. After reading it, I just had to have Sherlock sneeringly expound upon the subject of Western Philosophy, essentially summarizing what Welles wrote.

The pitched seats of the lecture hall were crammed with freshmen and dotted with brand-new bright orange University of Tennessee at Knoxville sweatshirts. As the professor entered, he noted that some of the freshmen were bright orange themselves.

“Good afternoon, I am professor Oleg Johannsen, and this is Introduction to Western Philosophy.”

Professor Oleg Johannsen got some sideways looks from his students, as he did not sound like an Oleg Johannsen. He sounded like a poncy Englishman. Nevertheless, the bemused stares of several students melted into admiration as he continued to speak.

“Well! That’s enough chit-chat,” the professor said. “We’ll begin with the Greeks. Socrates: a man who blathered on about how the search for knowledge was the most important human pursuit, and yet he despised science, because science did nothing to help him validate his own nebulous ethics.

“Socrates and his student, Plato, believed that virtue was fostered by the acquisition of knowledge. We all know this is ridiculous. Virtue is fostered by sympathy and compassion. I can’t tell you much about that, as my experience with sympathy and compassion is severely limited, but I can tell you that the men of the time whose beliefs defined ‘virtue’ _owned other human beings_.

“Plato is the most influential of all philosophers, which is tragic because his end-directed analysis is the basis for, and has destroyed the integrity of, all Western thought, and it will likely continue to do so until the end of recorded time. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.

“Aristotle was intelligent enough to refute some of his mentor’s tyrannical idealism, but unfortunately he did such a good job of impressing people with his own arbitrary doctrines that it took the collective intellect of Europe two thousand years to move beyond him. And so we skip ahead to the seventeenth century.”

As the professor continued to lecture, he strode back and forth across the dais, then began to wander up and down the aisles, piercing each student, one by one, with his resolute gaze.

“Descartes set out to build a new philosophy based on reason, but sadly, ‘reason’ is not the same as ‘facts.’ He was so committed to his erroneous mechanistic hypotheses for nature that when reality did not conform to them, he grew contemptuous of reality.

“Gottfried Liebnitz was just as pitiful. ‘God must exist because it would be better if he did than if he did not.’ Ignorant people attempt to use logic to prove their faulty assumptions, but this so-called ‘logic’ is no match for actual, observable facts.

“Locke was completely worthless because his intellectual comfort triumphed over his curiosity. Locke’s predecessors were all guilty of bending reality to fit their various erroneous pre-conceived notions, but I won’t even bother telling you what Locke believed, because any time he sensed that he was about to draw a conclusion which he did not like, he simply stopped.

“Hume, amusingly, denied the concept of the self, repudiated the idea of causation, abolished the existence not only of God but of matter, refuted anyone’s assertion of certainty about anything, and proved, logically, that logic was futile. So, one must at least give him credit for being consistent.

“Rousseau was popular with the French, because the French love displays of sincere emotion that are unencumbered by anything resembling thought. He believed that people were essentially good, but that evil originated from all the side effects of the existence of people -- such as culture. All that was needed to eliminate evil was to eliminate culture. ‘Logically,’ this would mean eliminating people. At which point I am reminded of the joke about God becoming anxious that he had come too close to perfection when creating France, and in order to remedy this, he filled it with French people.

“Now, you are all at a very vulnerable age, where the idea of renouncing all one’s worldly possessions, dismantling the police force, and refusing to repudiate debtors or sexual perverts actually sounds pretty phenomenal. But I assure you, Rousseau’s beliefs were based not on any supportable hypothesis but on feelings, and one’s personal feelings do not lend themselves to a society at large. Cannibals ‘feel’ that they should be allowed to eat humans, whereas I feel that they should be allowed to consume only the ignorant. The diversity of our beliefs illustrates the futility of establishing a universal ethic.

“But if you’re looking for a fun-loving guy to really lighten the mood, look no further than Schopenhauer, who believed that all suffering could be attributed to knowledge and will. He asserted that to try to reform the human condition would be vain and futile, and the only thing he remained confident in was the ultimate triumph of death and nothingness. Which probably made him a big hit at parties.

“Believing that the desire for material success was only a path to misery and disharmony with God, Schopenhauer seemed to hope for humanity to be reduced to chaste, starving ascetics but probably the ultimate condition to which a follower of Schopenhauer would aspire would be to not exist at all.

“At least Schopenhauer’s successor, Friedrich Nietzsche, had the common courtesy to discredit himself and his ideas by going insane from syphilis. Nietzsche loved to talk about Good and Evil, and especially delighted in ‘shocking’ people by telling them he preferred Evil. Anyone here who has ever ‘thrown up the horns,’ congratulations, you are on the same intellectual level as Nietzsche.

“Hegel is most famous for his Dialectic -- comprised of Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis -- which was based on the idea that isolated facts might appear contradictory or irrational, but with enough intellectual effort they could be found rational and blended into a grander and harmonious whole. I would like to criticise this notion, but I recently consumed a dish of bacon-and-egg ice cream that had been personally prepared for me by Heston Blumenthal, and I found it quite charming, so perhaps Hegel was on to something after all.

“Hegel was, however, like all philosophers have been and ever will be, a totalitarian. Western Philosophy is basically the history of people with too much time on their hands who believe that they just invented a way to make totalitarianism fun.

“And that just about wraps up Introduction to Western Philosophy. It looks like we’re only…twenty minutes in, but that’s fine, because unlike yourselves, I have gained some useful information during this class.  
  
“The truth is, your professor, Oleg Johannsen, has not arrived yet. My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I’m confident that Professor Johannsen be here just as soon as he settles with the homeless man that he hit with his car. Oh, don’t worry about the homeless man. I’ve hired dozens of them to get hit by cars, and they’re very good at it, they never injure themselves.

“I was not hired to teach you philosophy, but in the time I’ve spent teaching it to you, I’ve managed to do what my client hired me to do, which is to ascertain the identity of the person who raped said client’s niece. It was this boy.” Sherlock pointed at a burly young man at the end of the tenth row, and the hall erupted in a chorus of gasps and whispers. “By the way,” he said to the young man, “my client? The Dean. And my agreed-upon payment is to take your football scholarship, which you will no longer need where you are going, and divert it to provide additional funding to the Anthropology Department.

The student seated next to the accused, also an athlete, spoke up. “You came all the way here from England or whatever to charge Travis with rape?”

“As a matter of fact: No. I came here to visit the Body Farm. The Dean politely asked for my assistance upon my arrival.”

“You’ve got no proof,” the football player said, in a tone which suggested he had an influential parent who had solved little _problems_ like this for him in the past.

Sherlock smeared his hand down the side of the young man’s face, coming away with something greasy on his fingers. “Even if you had been more successful at using make-up to cover the distinctive fingernail scratches on your face, the odor and stains clinging to your letterman’s jacket all but give you away to anyone willing to observe. But the defensive wounds are sufficient, as tissue samples were taken from under her fingernails several hours later.”

He addressed the lecture hall once more. “I’ve no doubt that the football team has suffered a grievous loss; after all, it is a testament to this boy’s dedication and perseverance that he could complete any task at all after having been vomited on by a crying woman, much less the task he actually did complete.” Then to the young man, he said, “You’re the only thing that disgusts me more than Western philosophy. The Dean assures me that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which he will no doubt accomplish with assistance from his fellow Kappa Sigma, the District Attorney. Enjoy prison. Good afternoon.”

With that, Sherlock Holmes climbed the steps and exited at the rear of the lecture hall.

A student in a Bob Marley t-shirt turned and called after him, “So, wait, you’re saying you’re _not_ Professor Johannsen?”


End file.
